Sony Pictures Classics Picks Up Toronto Audience Winner 'Where Do We Go Now?'

"Where Do We Go Now?"Nadine Labaki's film also is Lebanon's submission for the best foreign-language film Oscar.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all U.S. rights to Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now?, the winner of the Cadillac People’s Choice Award at the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival.

The film is set in a remote village where the women conspire together to keep their husbands, sons and fathers from waging religious war with each other. It proved to be a real crowd-pleaser in Toronto, where previous audience awards have gone to such films as The King’s Speech, Precious and Slumdog Millionaire.

SPC acquired the film, produced by Anne-Dominque Toussaint of Les Films des Tournelles, from Pathe International.

To be added to this list of highly distinguished filmmakers supported by Sony Classics is an achievement in itself for me! I am proud and honored to say that I have become now part of the very prestigious Sony Classics family!,” Labaki said.

President Obama to Hollywood: 'I Never Promised You Easy'

The industry figures who attended Monday’s fundraising events in Los Angeles included Danny DeVito, Jack Black, will.i.am, Eva Longoria, Quincy Jones, Aaron Sorkin, Gina Gershon and Jamie Foxx.

President Barack Obama swept through Hollywood on Monday night, snarling traffic and headlining a pair of sold-out fundraisers attended by a broad cross section of the local business community and a sprinkling of entertainment executives and celebrities.

The first of the night’s events -- at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard -- drew an estimated 800 Democratic loyalists, while a later dinner at the Fig & Olive restaurant on chic Melrose Place attracted about 100 people, who paid $17,900 apiece to dine and participate in a question-and-answer session with the president. No official dollar figures were released, but if you assume an average contribution of $400 for the House of Blues event, Obama’s re-election campaign may have gleaned more than $2 million on the evening.

“There is a very solid contingency of Los Angeles based-business people stepping up,” said Ken Solomon, CEO of the Tennis Network and co-chairman of Obama’s California reielection campaign. “We have blown by our targets.”

The celebrities who attended Monday’s dinner included Danny DeVito, Jack Black, will.i.am, Eva Longoria, Quincy Jones, Aaron Sorkin, Gina Gershon and Jamie Foxx.

Obama stepped onto the stage at the House of Blues shortly after 6 p.m. He was introduced by event MC Jesse Tyler Ferguson, an actor on the ABC comedy Modern Family, came out to introduce Obama. Ferguson said: “The end of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ is the signature achievement of our time." The West Hollywood crowd clapped and cheered.

"The end of 'don't ask don't tell' was a major, major accomplishment and the mention brought the biggest applause point of the night," said Thom Lynch, executive director the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, which was asked by the Obama campaign to perform at the event. (They also performed for Bill Clinton when he was president.) "It's always an honor to perform for a sitting president. And tonight was wonderful. It was a packed house. It was very warm. It was a very excited crowd."

Obama spoke mostly about the economy and his tax plan.

"I know over the last two and a half years sometimes you've gotten tired, gotten discouraged," the president told the House of Blues crowd. "It's gotten tough. ... Here’s the thing, I never promised you easy. If you wanted easy you would not have campaigned for Barrack Hussein Obama. What I promised was there was a vision of America out there we believed in, that if we worked hard we could achieve our vision. What I promised was that I would wake up every single day fighting for you. ... But what I said was if you are willing to stick with me, hang in there, I was positive we could achieve our dreams. America has been through tougher times."

At Fig & Olive, the group included DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who introduced the president, along with Avatar producer Jon Landau, director Judd Apatow and Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown, among others.

The celebs were seated at round tables with white table linens in the hip, modern, sleek restaurant, with high ceilings and a wall of wines in front of which Obama spoke.

In his introduction, Katzenberg said: "I have a dependency on President Obama. He inherited a crashing economy and two wars and opponents who questioned if he was even born [in America]. Yet he kept us moving fowrad... He has dealt adversity on all fronts, but he maintained his stature. ... We must keep fighting for him so he can keep fighting for us."

Obama got a standing ovation.

Obama's remarks included him trying to sell the jobs plan -- and his proposed Buffett Rule tax hike -- to the wealthy crowd: "We’re going through an unprecedented time in our history. We've not seen anything like this in our lifetimes. This financial crisis is as bad as any since the Great Depression.

"My job was to make sure we did not tip into depression... to save a financial system teetering on the brink of meltdown. What got me involved in this president business... was not just to solve a crisis, but a recognition that after decades the American people felt as if rules had somehow changed on them."

Monday’s West Hollywood events capped a busy round of California appearances by the president that included a televised town hall at the Silicon Valley headquarters of social media provider LinkedIn and a $35,800-a-plate dinner at the Bay area home of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. Before heading to Los Angeles on Monday, the chief executive lunched at the La Jolla mansion of local Democratic heavy-hitters Elizabeth and Mason Phelps, where $5,000 got you a meal and $10,000 bought a picture with the President. Among those attending that event were Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm and J. Craig Venter, the scientist credited with decoding the human genome.

Tuesday, Obama flies on to Denver for another fundraiser. Officials in his re0election campaign estimate that the chief executive’s three-day swing through the West will bring in about $7 million. The President has picked up the fund-raising pace in recent weeks and has attended nine different campaign events since he delivered his jobs proposal to Congress on Sept. 8.

Weekend Report: 'Lion' Remains 'King,' 'Moneyball,' 'Dolphin Tale' Go Extra Innings

Four newcomers, two of which opened to over $20 million, weren't quite strong enough to unseat The Lion King (in 3D), which held the top spot for the second weekend in a row. Moneyball and Dolphin Tale had strong starts and are currently neck-and-neck for second place, while Abduction and Killer Elite both underperformed. Overall, the weekend box office tallied at least $116 million, which makes it the highest-grossing September weekend ever.

The Lion King was off a light 27 percent to $22.1 million, bringing the re-release's 10-day total to $61.7 million. When added to previous Lion King grosses, the movie has now made a whopping $390.2 million, which is good for 12th place on the all-time domestic chart. The movie is poised to easily top $400 million and move in to the all-time Top 10, but that's probably going to require extending the run past the two-week engagement that was initially planned.

After winning on Friday, Moneyball had to settle for second place for the weekend with an estimated $20.6 million from 2,993 locations. It topped The Benchwarmers ($19.7 million) for best start ever for a baseball movie, and it also ranked fifth all-time among sports dramas. While the opening is on the low end for a Brad Pitt movie, it was slightly above September 2008's Burn After Reading ($19.1 million). Finally, the movie was up a tad from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps ($19 million) but down from The Social Network ($22.45 million). Sony/Columbia is reporting that 51 percent of the audience was male and 64 percent were over the age of 35, and it received an "A" CinemaScore.

While Moneyball's primary draw was probably Brad Pitt, it had a lot of other things going for it as well. Beginning with its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival a few weeks ago, the movie has received nearly unanimous rave reviews, which surely helped a bit with the older audience that showed up for the movie. Its ubiquitous and straightforward marketing positioned the movie as a character-focused underdog story that happened to be set in the world of baseball, and that probably went a long way towards the movie setting the new baseball opening weekend record. With strong word-of-mouth, Moneyball should hang on well in the coming weeks, though it would take a miracle to reach The Social Network's $97 million.

Dolphin Tale wasn't too far behind with an estimated $20.26 million, and there's a chance it finishes ahead of Moneyball when actual grosses are reported on Monday afternoon. The debut is way up from April's Soul Surfer and also an improvement on Hotel for Dogs ($17 million). In fact, if estimates hold it will top Eight Below ($20.19 million) for the best opening ever for a live-action animal-centric family movie. Distributor Warner Bros. is reporting that the audience was 66 percent female and 51 percent under the age of 25, and that crowd awarded the movie a rare "A+" CinemaScore. An estimated 50 percent of the grosses came from 3D presentations at around 2,700 locations.

Dolphin Tale's strong opening is a bit of a surprise, considering family audiences still turned out in droves this weekend for The Lion King. The two are definitely different movies, though, and Dolphin Tale filled a void for inspirational family fare. The movie's marketing emphasized that it was from the producers of The Blind Side, and while Dolphin Tale didn't come close to that movie's $35.1 million opening, it was still very respectable in its own right. Considering the genre and the very warm audience reception, Dolphin Tale is poised to hold on well in coming weeks.

It appears like Taylor Lautner is the latest Twilight star to appear in a dissapointing movie outside of the franchise: Abduction opened to a weak estimated $11.2 million from 3,118 locations. That's less than half of Eagle Eye's $29.2 million opening from three years ago, and also off from fellow Twilight star Robert Pattinson's Water for Elephants ($16.8 million). The audience breakdown was 68 percent female and 56 percent under the age of 25, and the movie received a "B-" CinemaScore (though that improves to an "A-" rating among females under 18).

While it makes a nice headline to claim that Abduction proves Lautner isn't much of a draw, the statistics actually suggest the opposite to a degree. For an action-packed on-the-run thriller to skewer 68 percent female on opening weekend is very odd, and that imbalance can likely be attributed to Lautner's presence. The big question, then, is why male audiences didn't show much interest. The answer is probably rooted in the movie itself—the action looked pedestrian and the story came off as ludicrous in the trailers and non-existent in commercials. Also, while critics don't really have a big impact on movies like this, an atrocious 3 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes definitely didn't do it any favors.

Killer Elite wound up in last place among the newcomers with an estimated $9.5 million. That's on the low end for recent Jason Statham movies, with The Mechanic ($11.4 million), Transporter 3 ($12.1 million) and Death Race ($12.6 million) all coming in ahead. Demographic information is not available, but the movie did earn a "B" CinemaScore.

Trailers and commercials for Killer Elite were action-packed, prominently featured the Scorpions' 1984 song "Rock You Like a Hurricane," and listed Statham, Clive Owen and Robert DeNiro as stars. All of that made the movie come off like a second-rate version of The Expendables, and surely first time distributor Open Road Films would have been thrilled with even half of that movie's $34.8 million opening. In reality, though, Killer Elite was Statham's show all along, and therefore never really had a chance of making it out of the low-teens. Had the movie been released on a more hospitable weekend (one without Abduction siphoning off some action junkies and Moneyball monopolizing adult males), it probably would have would up closer to The Mechanic's $11.4 million start.

Pan Am Takes Flight

Pan American Worldwide Airlines commonly known as Pan Am may have gone out of business in 1991, but thanks to ABC television it now has a new life. You can find it on Sunday nights at 10:00 p.m. EST. ABC is investing a great deal in the very ambitious project by giving this new program a sweet time slot.

I usually don’t write about new TV shows, but this time I couldn’t resist. Let’s face it. We have an abundance of crime dramas, cop shows, lawyer shows, and DA and forensic shows. I have to commend ABC for at least trying something new, innovative and fresh. Recreating the golden era of air travel will be a challenging feat. After watching the debut episode, only one word comes to mind—impressive. It is as if I wasn’t watching television but a movie from the 1960s.

I think Pan Am catches the essence by creating a somewhat “dreamy state” of what life must have been as a stewardess working on international flights in the 1960s. Pan Am definitely has a unique tone and style that you normally don’t find in television programs.

The producer and writer, Jack Orman, said, “The goal was to create a sweeping epic and wish fulfilling program.” I’m sure some critics will undoubtedly make a comparison of Pan Am to Mad Men. Both are period pieces reflecting the social issues and changes that were occurring in the 1960s. The major difference in Pan Am is the focus on female empowerment.

Although Pan Am can be described as a romanticized version of the 1960s, there is also a number of serious subplots, such as a flashback to the Bay of Pigs and an espionage angle involving the CIA, the KGB, and MI6. Producer Jack Oman says, “This isn’t as farfetched as it sounds. They did a lot of research on the issue and found “Pan Am had a very cozy relationship with the State Department.”

It’s hard to imagine a time when people actually got dressed up to fly. I mean the whole nine yards—suit and tie and fancy dresses. Flying was all about class and style. And nowhere was that more important than at Pan Am. Their flight attendants especially reflected that view. They were selling an image. Pan Am was an American icon and represented everything good that America had to offer.

Pan Am has tremendous potential to be the type of flagship program that ABC is hoping to create for its Sunday night lineup. The first show got off to a nice start, especially with the opening sequence where they recreated Pan Am’s iconic air terminal in New York City with its maiden flight of their new clipper called Majestic, which flew from New York to London. As I said, this isn’t your ordinary TV show.

Nowadays, we are all tired of flying. Getting on a plane is anything but glamorous and exciting. But perhaps we can close our eyes and imagine what it must have been like at the dawn of the jet age. The good news is we now have a new television program that will help us relive and dream of the glory days of passenger flight.